ABSTRACT
African Scholars and Intellectuals have always been “at risk.” While the continent serves as the global breadbasket of intellectual and human thought, the push-pull factors of migration have compelled some intellectuals to find spaces of articulation in non-continental geographic spaces.
As such, the Western systems of acculturation, inclusion, and exclusion vary in their purported ethical justifications of exclusion and inclusion, relying on colonial and other supra-historical modes of thought to assert the logic of collective thought in decision-making. This chapter makes the argument that the boundaries of exclusion and inclusion of Africans in the Western academy can be analytically interpreted through rational choice “institutionalism.” For, as institutions are defined as formal and informal rules that govern behavior, along with being formal and informal institutions that monitor and enforce, they constrain and guide behaviors. Rational Choice Institutionalists emphasize not only the way in which individual behaviors are constrained but, they also interpret the institutions themselves as being constructs and agents of state-centered self-interested parties.
The articulation of this chapter supports theoretical strata: it asserts that the philosophical orientation of sociological and historical institutionalism underpins the behavioral, cognitive and social cosmological explanators behind what makes the behaviors of Africans in the Western Academies so unique. The boundaries of African inclusion speak to the differing levels of access to privilege, social status and perceived relevance to the status quo—However, these boundaries also speak to sociospheric exclusions of exiled Africans from conversations about home, peace, love, and indeed, themselves as global scholars at risk. The transformation of the political community on behalf of the exiled African scholar will demand complex remedies that are not housed within the Western academy alone; what is suggested is a global reimagination of academic communities that are (1) Cosmopolitan in orientation and (2) Respectful of cultural differences. This chapter will introduce the concept of “The New African Academic,” and frame this group within the larger social and environmental conversations about African exiles, academic freedom, and human freedoms. The theoretical premise is that any institution is not unlike the society within which it rests and their purported intellectual articulations, but as such, the institutions themselves and the society they inhere are also victims of ignorance.
